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uniform, she gave a quick cry, and Brenda put out a hand towards her as if to soothe and reassure her.
    â€˜Hush, darling,’ she said, and then, to Bobby: ‘Has anyone come yet? Is there anything we can do?’
    â€˜I must go to him,’ the younger girl cried, and Brenda said again:
    â€˜Hush, Jennie, darling, hush.’ She added to Bobby: ‘I had to tell Miss Clarke.’
    â€˜I must go to him. Why can’t I go to him?’ Jennie repeated.
    â€˜Not yet,’ Bobby said to her. ‘It is better not, not yet. We are doing everything possible. We will do our best to find out what’s happened.’
    He went on, feeling very sorry for the two girls, more especially for the younger one who looked so pretty and so fragile. It seemed to him sad that her young life should be darkened by such a tragedy. The elder girl, he thought, seemed like a tower of dark strength, able to stand up against worse things still.
    â€˜Must be a dreadful shock for them both,’ he thought. ‘Unbelievable thing to happen, they must think it.’
    By now the maids, too, had become aware that something was amiss. He found them all four clustering uneasily by the service door at one end of the hall. He told them that their master had met with an accident, but that Dr Gregory was in charge, help had been sent for, and that there was nothing for them to do but to go on with their ordinary duties.
    Then he proceeded to the study where he looked very thoughtfully at the open window and the open safe against the wall, for it seemed to him strange that when Sir Christopher went to the billiard-room at the other end of the house, he should have left his study with the door of the safe wide open like this.
    Only had he?
    Certainly there was no sign that the safe itself had been tampered with in any way, but then as he had noticed before the contents seemed disarranged and in disorder. One large envelope, apparently containing papers, had fallen on the floor, and looking at it, though he was careful not to touch it, Bobby saw that it bore the imprint of Marsden, Carsley, and Marsden, Lincoln’s Inn.
    â€˜That’s the lawyer the Jennie girl is sweet on, I suppose,’ Bobby commented to himself.
    He crossed to the window and examining it carefully was able to detect what seemed to him recent scratches on the sill, as though someone had climbed in there recently. Unfortunately, the ground just beneath was flagged and showed no footprints. But bending out farther, though still with great caution, Bobby saw that just below the sill a piece of freshly-torn cloth fluttered on an old rusty nail that had at some time, for some reason, been driven in the wall, between the bricks. Cautiously he detached it, and placing it on paper on the writing-table, examined it closely.
    â€˜Bit of striped worsted, apparently,’ he muttered. ‘Well, I wonder what the C.I.D. will make of that? Got to look for someone wearing striped worsted trousers, I suppose.’
    He heard motor cars arriving and concluded that the Yard people had come at last. He wished very keenly that he had been allowed to stay in the billiard-room. It would have been very interesting to see how the big men set to work. Mitchell would be there, no doubt, and other big wigs as well, perhaps even that semi-divinity, the Assistant Commissioner himself. For this was probably going to be a big case and rouse much public interest.
    But a humble constable with only three years’ service to his credit could not expect to be allowed to participate in the doings of the great, and so resignedly he took a slip of paper, timed himself very carefully, and copied out the brief report he had made of the incident of the caretaker and his apples and the escape of the intruder into the ‘Elmhurst’ garden.
    He found that writing this out again took five minutes and a half and at that he rubbed his nose very hard indeed.
    â€˜More and more of a